So, why go to FYF and spend my time at the comedy show? Well, because you DIDN’T, and that’s a shame. While Japanther and Olivia Tremor Control were doing their totally normal deal outside, these hard-working comedians, most of whom normally stand onstage in the backroom of Meltdown Comics telling jokes to a core set of followers, were waaaay out of their element—being out in the daytime, in a tent, with loud, LOUD rock bands playing just yards away, and with crazy security guards keeping people a safe and uncomfortable distance from the stage. And yet some of these funny men (no women in the set, for some reason) pulled off the performance of the year, with tons of laughs and not one regret in our joke-saturated heads that we might be having more fun with the heat-stroke crowd outside.

Of course, the “Splinter’s Den” tent was parfait-ed with bands between the comedy acts, so to get front-row spots, we had to get there early and battle our way past part of that crowd still watching the tail end of Fool’s Gold. Let me tell ya, if ever a band was not at all the preferred lead-in to a comedy show, it’s these dudes. I’m not putting down their music, which comes in a unique retro flavor that’s hard to pull off even when you’re far younger and leaner than these guys. But I am saying that their post-wave, Nu Romantic pinings were the opposite of humor and mirth. Not even their bassist’s striking resemblance to Zach Galifiniakis could make them blend in with the acts that were to follow.

After the post-wavers washed out, and after the security guards forced the crowd to back up three paces and form an imaginary barricade against the comedy stage for NO conceivable reason, hosts Jonah Ray and Kumail Nanjiani hopped right to it and started through the stack of comedians. The theme this Saturday afternoon was ONE-LINERS, and being the slow fan of media that I am, it was only at a rock festival tent in 2011 that I realized that ALL comedy is now the Henny Youngman one-liner. Steven Wright by way of Mitch Hedberg has won the battle: turgid break-up stories and making fun of pop stars are out; surreal two-sentence twists are all the rage.  No back-stories, no set-ups, no preaching about how both political parties are in collusion to keep us down—the only set-up we needed was just maybe a persona to keep the quirkiness going.

And Jim Hamilton is nothing if not a persona. Out in front of the crowd, I feel like he pulled back on his normal retarded Jack Nance mannerisms a bit—maybe he was worried the crowd would be too distracted by the noisy bands nearby to know he was faking it, or that they’d be confused at his slower pace. But he got laughs, and was able to pull out some of my favorite chestnuts, which I feel are too fresh to reveal in print yet but involve “fumigation” and “Applebee’s.”

Up next was the token guitar-strummin’ comedian, Nick Thune. He almost lost me by blatantly stealing Neil Hamburger’s bit and requesting “more laughs in the monitors.” Fuck you, you cocksucker! But then again, Neil Hamburger almost certainly stole it from some Gong Show-era comedian, and Thune had a lot of really witty originals, including some math-related humor that might not have worked nearly as well in a boozy nightclub as it did for young high-schoolers at the crack of mid-afternoon.

Speaking of boozy, have you ever had a friend that you don’t know has gone sober until a weird, obvious party moment? I had no idea that long-standing friend-of-the-scene comedian Matt Dwyer had given up drinking and drugging until his performance this very day, when he started in on some jokes about wanting to get O’Doul’s in the VIP beer tent. Whoa, what demons of his was I not seeing due to my own booze consumption? Anyway, Dwyer’s newfound straight-edge lifestyle made him a “minor threat” onstage. Once again, here was a comedian with some seriously good one-liner jokes: a few classics that the Dwyer fans will always know, but also one or two new zingers that had a dash of even more bitterness than I’m used to from Matt. Maybe without the crutch of alcohol, he might one day pop a blood vessel, or just kill us all? This cat has anger issues, and as he gets older, he’s looking more and more like Lee Harvey Oswald, with a bit of Richard Nixon’s 5 o’clock shadow. Don’t get on his enemies list.

Jon Dore worried me a bit when he hit the stage: he had a smirky gleam in his eye, and his tall, bearded manliness made him seem a bit older than the other comedians, somewhere between a Judd Apatow character and Men of a Certain Age. But oddly enough, despite a bit about the importance of our not coming up and talking to him after the show, he was the comedian who bridged the gap between audience and comic in a very appropriate rock and roll way, not only by berating the security guards (“This one doesn’t even have a headset! He has no connection to the outside world!”) but also by getting us together and crowd-surfing through us while reciting some of his jokes.

At long last, the great Emo Philips got up to perform, and thank god he’s given up the short-haired dad look he briefly adopted in the late nineties/early aughts. Fueled by the crowd’s energy and angry from a recent divorce, he was head to toe Emo, and a bit darker than I’d remembered him being, despite his blood-bath appearance in Weird Al’s UHF. He had a ton of great one-two liners, and some well-crafted birthday card jokes in his notebook that I wish I could buy, but my favorites were the puns—especially when he said the city of Winnipeg sounded like “a cheap contest for pirates.” As reigning king of the comedy tent at FYF fest, it made me think of how off-the-wall he must have seemed in the midst of the angry-loud-homophobe comedy that was the mid-late 80s. Today, he definitely fit in, and seemed almost… prophetic.

It was a lot less crowded for the comedy than it had been for Fool’s Gold, but the tent was still packed with enough people that it was hard to vamoose from after it was over. And as I sauntered over to see the bands outside, I felt like some of that comedy energy had spread to the rest of the entertainment. Even the Strange Boys were goofin’, trying to take requests from the audience, and covering a bit of “Everyday People” by Sly and the Family Stone! They weren’t able to finish it, but hey, sometimes we’re right, and sometimes we’re wrong. Putting a bunch of funny people in with the musicians is NOT wrong, and I can’t wait to see more of this happening in L.A.

-Dan Collins

MP3: Fool’s Gold “Street Clothes”

Watch the teaser video, lots of dials moving.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhkrE0raySk

Last month, Tom Tom Magazine celebrated its 5th issue with a release party at the Alexandria Hotel in Los Angeles. See photos from the party, here.

Tom Tom Magazine, for those who don’t know, is dedicated to female drummers and beat makers, which is very cool. Since it’s based in New York, founder Mindy Abovitz enlisted Swahili Blonde’s Nicole Turley to give them the lowdown on L.A. women who beat things well, so issue #5 featured Tearist’s Yasmine Kittles, Voices Voices’ Nico Turner & Janean Farris, Danielle Devincenzo of Jeffertitti’s Nile, Laena Myers-Ionita of Swahili Blonde, The Like, & Dante Vs Zombies, Rainbow Arabia’s Tiffany Preston, Cheryl Caddick of Silver Phial, Erica Garcia, formerly of Fool’s Gold, and Amanda Jo Williams.

Amanda Jo Williams, Swahili Blonde, and Crooked Cowboy & The Freshwater Indians played the release party in town. And though technically Crooked Cowboy doesn’t have female percussionists, he has those amazing singers that take “ooh ooh ooh” to a whole ‘nother level. Incredible. I guess that’s vocal percussion—Michael Jackson might say so. He’s the king of that. Anyway, today, a video of Amanda Jo Williams performing “Sunlight” at the party  appeared on a literary magazine’s website. Perhaps it was Tarpaulin Sky Press’s way of celebrating St. Paddy’s? We agree that “Sunlight” is a great song, uplifting, starting at the toes, and reaching up, up, up, until our fingertips sway high above our heads like blades of grass at dawn. And it only takes a minute or so.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q--ynA-Klpc

But it just so happens that Williams helped us celebrate St. Paddy’s on last year’s mixtape, and she did a fine job of that as well. Here is a drinking song by Amanda Jo Williams, “All Is Love In Oral Things We Do.”

MP3: Amanda Jo Williams “All Is Love In Oral Things We Do”

Amanda Jo Williams has got an album coming out at the end of April, called Mary’s Big Feet, on a new local label called Nocturnal Sol. It features many of her great home recordings, including some guest appearances by her son, Jack, who turned 4 years old today! Gosh, we’ve got a lot of celebrating going on! You’ll hear Jack on the song “Blue Toy Airplane,” which you can check out in advance because it kicks in at 1:54 during one of Amanda’s playdate videos, Playdate World Cup DNA Activation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqBKXLlMsJg

Last but not least, we’re excited to co-present AJW’s Monday night residency at the Echo all April. Have a nice day.

Sometimes lineups are not at all straightforward. Such was the case with the triple bill of Rainbow Arabia, Wallpaper, and Fools Gold. Married locals Danny and Tiffany Preston of Rainbow Arabia started the evening with their earnest and synth-heavy world music. Their strangely beautiful music was so reminiscent of a paired-down Viva K that I simultaneously desired the catalog of the former and wondered nostalgically into the whereabouts of the latter. The duo that is Wallpaper were up next, bringing a coterie of really excited followers who pretty much lost their mind as soon as the drummer kicked out the jams. By the time Eric Frederic had taken off his tie, I realized I was no longer in L.A., having been magically transported to the fictitious world of Prince’s Purple Rain, with Wallpaper standing in for Morris Day and The Time. Or Was (Not Was)’ heir apparent? In any event, Fool’s Gold’s was able to continue the liveliness of the show, bringing what we’ve come to expect from their eclectic jam band melodies. I only wonder if they know their fan base forms a tiny circle before they take the stage, bowing their head and asking to be a “spiritual conduit” to the music. I didn’t notice any purple Kool-Aid on site, but one can never be too sure. Photos by Melissa Moore.

Fool’s Gold

[View with PicLens]

Rainbow Arabia

[View with PicLens]

Wallpaper

[View with PicLens]

But perhaps the panic was all Fool’s Gold? It was interesting to see them take the stage this night—their first local headlining show in almost a year—and look a little nervous? A subtle but apparent pressure was on for a band that almost had to prove themselves all over again to a hometown crowd that helped make them. They eased and oozed right into it though, opening with the brand new slow burner “Tel Aviv,” bookending “Nadine” and “Poseidon” with yet another new one, “Bark And Bite.” The tempos, while more pronounced then ever, seemed a tad decidedly slower, allowing Luke Top’s vocals to soar in a way I had never previously witnessed, leaving lot’s of room to breathe and contract, reminding us what a truly unique style the man has, a sort of trace of sand in his syrup only causing it to stick that much harder. We were all breathing our own sighs of relief to have these guys back, and this became all the more apparent once the exhales quickly became a furious panting, once we heard that playful opening line to “Surprise Hotel” (seriously, what is it about this song?!?). The set was instantly turned up a dozen notches, as the crowd jumped all in unison, truly welcoming a still jet-lagged band back home.

The set unofficially ended with “The World Is All There Is,” where the band ritualistically chanted the “Woah-ohs” right into the crowd, leaving their instruments on stage—which we’ve seen them do before but not to this kind of intimate extreme. The crowd ended up hovered over them as they all got on the ground clapping hands, creating this sort of beautiful pit of benevolence where all lines of audience and band were blurred, all of us repeating the refrain, “My friend.”

There were two encores, but I was somehow convinced nothing could have been better than that very moment, so we walked out into the night, life affirmed…

—Gabriel Hart

THE WINNERS ARE…

Chris Jones with Best of Bill Withers

Kyle Safieh with Rick James – Street Songs

Pretty fantastic.

We’ll be doing another ticket giveaway on Monday. Check larecord.com for details!

The lineup was intense; its scope boggles the mind. Watching Tinariwen and Konono  No 1 reach magical levels, I contemplated how their styles were born without the influences and context in which I understand music. For them, there is no Beatles, no Michael Jackson, no Led Zeppelin in their songs. Although Baaba Maal is a romantic and cool showman—a superman—seeing him doesn’t inverse reality like these other two. Or, rather, he and Playing For Change make music inspired by globe-trotting. Maal’s songs acknowledge and weave instruments and styles from all over time and place, which he pulls together in his signature energetic way. Full of positive vibes, he delivered songs about love, nature and television. Playing For Change performed many cover songs with musicians and singers they’ve picked up around the world through a mega-giant-widescope project—again, can’t believe that all of these bands were on the same bill. Each one represented so much.

And in America’s corner we had Yeasayer and Fool’s Gold. Fool’s Gold invented its music in the dark forests of Echo Park. The original tribe has slimmed down to 6 or 7 members. While the songs are tighter, that percussive wildness laced with Hebrew is what made the natives feel at home and free, lost in a recognizable but foreign dubbed scenario. They made sense here. On the other hand, Yeasayer doesn’t come to mind when you say “afro pop.” They’re rather future-oriented and stoic. Watching them, I didn’t feel the earth move; rather, I felt beamed up to a cloud starship and their voices were a chorus of alien-angels. It’s not just technology. It’s that I can understand what they’re saying and where they come from. They sounded great and stuck to my brain like an abduction souvenir—but they didn’t make me feel as transcendental.

—Daiana Feuer

Introducing someone to a band you know backwards and forwards is almost like watching someone lose their virginity. Awkward, confused, they make funny noises and shy remarks; their eyes widen as they try following different rhythms; a little sweat breaks on their upper lip; their hips quake. “It makes me feel warm…There’s a lot of them…” My friend’s simple statements suggested she was deeply involved in revelation. “I feel love.” She also commented, “It sounds like Simba being born,” and later, “It’s a Jewish wedding on a cruise ship.” Ah yes, a perfect scenario to escape and get freaky in some locked room with a cruise attendant or friend of the marrying couple. Not enough people talk about the sexual imperative in Fool’s Gold’s music. You can smell it in the center of the crowd—a place only the daring should venture—glands and orifices awaken in sybaritic display. It’s intoxicating. Enough to make you faint, really.

The many band members—tonight featuring the addition of a feller that usually does sound at the Echo in place of Matt Popieluch—celebrated their short return home before going back on tour. The sax and guitar became one during “Surprise Hotel.” Bassist/singer Luke Top remarked after a long “Poseidon” that it was the best Lewis Pesacov had ever played it on guitar. What went on behind Pesacov’s eyes, which remained closed almost the entire time?

Was he imagining a storm met by a door which opens onto the Orient where babes in sexy lingerie beckon him forth? Or does the experience transcend conventional realities, becoming a pure envelopment of sound, and the rhythms weave as if pulled on a giant loom that requires 15 operators stretching the fabric in all directions. What is the true nature of image and sound as they co-exist in the mind?? I dunno!

The band’s descent into the audience usually indicates the finale, but this time it served as psychedelic intermission. “The World Is All There Is” broke down to its core rhythm, all the way to silence as the band dispersed through the crowd chanting “whoa oh ohhhh,” ya know, as they do.

Then Luke Top reappeared on stage, followed by the rest of the band starting up again with the addition of Tearist’s Yasmine Kittles on metal pipe, Entrance’s Paz Lenchantin on maracas, and Guy Blakeslee on shaker and invisible keyboard—his unoccupied hand played the air where imaginary keys floated beneath his fingers. Additionally Stewart Cole of Ed Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros almost exploded with enthusiasm as he shook a shakable. A sign blinked over his head saying, “I fucking love this song!” All the musicians packed on stage shot their arms out and bent their knees as cogs in a machine—or an old wooden toy whose inner parts whistle, creak, and slide to turn its wheels. Some sounds, you can’t figure out what is making them. It’s all very sexy at this point, like an orgy.

—Daiana Feuer (words + photo)

(from Gorilla Manor out in February on Frenchkiss)

L.A. darlings Local Natives have had a big year—a UK tour, a record deal, and a road trip with Fool’s Gold and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. Bassist Andy Hamm stepped outside on a chilly afternoon in Seattle to share with us some of the highlights. This interview by Amber Hollingsworth.

I saw you guys open at the El Rey last month and I thought you just stole the show. I’m so excited to hear you’re touring with Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros—how did that come together?
Andy Hamm: We hung out with a couple of guys from Fool’s Gold, who are also on the tour, and they asked us to jump on. We were like, “God, Fool’s Gold already has anywhere from 7 to 11 members, and Edward Sharpe has anywhere from 12 to 15,” but it’s cool because it’s like an L.A. representation. I think it’s hard to find three bands that get along and all are doing their own thing—nobody’s really stepping on each other’s toes stylewise or musically.
What’s it like hanging out with a huge troupe of hippies? I just imagine so many hugs on this tour.
Andy Hamm: One big happy hippy family? Yeah, everybody’s really cool. There are so many of them, you hang out with a new person every night. And on stage, we play during the Edward Sharpe set, sometimes a bunch of their guys jump up on one of our songs, and same thing for Fool’s Gold. Edward Sharpe lets us use a bunch of their equipment too, and the guys who do sound for our shows actually played in Fool’s Gold. So yeah, the more I think about it, it is this big commune of L.A. people who play music together and share everything, and it works out to everybody’s benefit.
I wanted to congratulate you on getting signed to Frenchkiss Records. How did that happen?
Andy Hamm: Yeah, thanks! It was important for us to find someone who’s on the same page, and we’d been talking to them for awhile. They saw us I think the first time we played in New York 6 to 8 months ago, and we just kept in touch. We met with a few others, but with Frenchkiss, they just thought what we thought. That’s what was most important to us when partnering up with a label—finding people we get along with and who let us do our thing.
Your album is due out in the U.S. in February. There’s been so much buzz about your live performances—what can we expect from the Local Natives studio album?
Andy Hamm: What I love about it is they’re two totally different things: if you listen to the album and like it, then hopefully you’ll love the live show. The feedback that we get is that the live show is more energetic and a bit more in-your-face. The album shows off the separate orchestrated parts, and the melodies come out a lot more. If people see us and expect to hear exactly what the record sounds like—you’re not going to get that, but you’ll definitely get a new experience.
I like the band name Local Natives, it’s subtly funny. Who came up with it?
Andy Hamm: I actually came up with it. We were in the middle of recording the album when we decided we needed a name, and we were going through lists and lists. But I liked Local Natives; it rolls off the tongue and it’s redundant in sort of a quirky way. We thought it was a good representation of us too because, as a group, everybody writes and everybody contributes—it’s very much a family effort within the band.
Is everyone actually from L.A.?
Andy Hamm: I grew up in Golden, Colorado. Ryan, Taylor, and Kelsey all grew up in Orange County, and Matt grew up in Chino Hills.
You guys have been living in a house together in Silverlake. Give me some secrets—who has the most annoying habit?
Andy Hamm: Ugh, there are a lot of annoying habits. Taylor’s probably the worst with the dishes and leaving lights on. Ryan’ll sleep all day long if you let him, so we’ll be in the van ready to go on tour or head to the practice studio and he’s always the last one out. We also own a rat named Burpy Christ that lives upstairs with Matt, I don’t even want to get into that.
Haha fair enough. So quick story: I was walking back from your show and I ran into my friend and I said “Oh man I just saw this band Local Natives, they blew me away!” and he gets this look on his face and says, “Yeah, I know them. My ex-girlfriend broke up with me to go out with one of them.” My question is, have you ever stolen anything from someone?
Andy Hamm: Wow! Well, I used to be quite a Dennis the Menace. I was troublesome but I always got away with it. I knew how to talk to people and be sweet. As far as stealing, I was pretty young, must’ve been 5th grade, but I had a friend who lived across the street from me (he’s one of my best friends to this day), and I remember I was at his house and I was looking for a toy or something in his room, and I saw a $5 bill just chilling there and something just clicked. I grabbed it and put it in my pocket and then I went in to him, and I could feel the guilt weighing in, so I just said “Uhh my mom’s calling me, I gotta go home.” I ran across the street and got home and 5 minutes later the doorbell rings and it’s him. He’s like, “Hey man, there was $5 in my room, did you take it?” And it’s that moment of truth, and the guilt’s weighing on me and I’m like, “Yeah… I got it right here,” and I gave it back. I remember I couldn’t hang out with him for what was probably only a week but what felt like a year.
So your bad behavior was pretty innocent at the heart of it.
Andy Hamm: I probably did a lot of stuff that I shouldn’t have done when I was little, but I was never that kid that would walk into a Radio Shack and grab a CD player. It was more like water guns and snowballs, stuff that a young boy living in Golden, Colorado would do.
I read on your blog about the fan in Vermont who hosted you in her home when you toured through there. Is that a typical Local Natives approach to touring, just get there and hope to find a place to sleep?
Andy Hamm: We do that in almost every town. It works. It’s a combination of us not having a lot of money and you know, our music just seems to attract very good-natured people. So we’ll usually just announce it in the set. We’ll say, “Hey, we have sleeping bags, we don’t smell that bad, so if you have room on your floor…” and I’d say 90% of the time there’s at least one person that says, “I’ve got a tiny one-bedroom but if you don’t mind sleeping on the tile floor in the kitchen, you can do it.” Luckily no one in the band is a prima donna, so it works.
So the other 10% of the time, do you end up sleeping in very sketchy places?
Andy Hamm: I’d be lying if I said it’s always been hunky dory. There was one time, I think it was our first time we had toured outside of the West Coast, and we stayed in Philadelphia. It was approaching last call, around 2:30 a.m., everybody had been drinking, and it was one of those nights where partying came above being responsible and finding a place to crash, so none of us had really met anybody with a place we could crash at, and there wasn’t a hotel in sight. We met this guy who was just sitting by himself at the bar, and he was like, “I loved you guys.” And he was older, like mid-40s I would guess—he just sort of had a weird vibe about him. But it was 3:00 in the morning, the bar was closing, and so we followed the guy to his apartment. Well first he took us to this bar that was still open, and he just sat there and drank I think three PBRs and two shots of whiskey, and we literally just sat there in the bar with him. Then he took us to his apartment, and he put on… this is really weird the more I think about it… he put on a murder mystery on a record player. It was like someone reading a murder mystery, a book on tape, but it was on record. And we all laid down and he just let it play. So the story’s playing while I’m trying to sleep, about this guy who’s murdering women. And then I woke up and the dude was just sitting by himself in the room we crashed in by an open window with a 6-pack of PBR and chain smoking cigarettes. This was at like 5:00 in the morning. So, I didn’t go to sleep past that—I don’t think any of us went to sleep. I remember leaning over and looking at Kelsey and his eye was open, giving me that look like, “Do we run now and save our lives or do we just pretend we’re asleep?”
Did you bail as soon as the sun came up?
Andy Hamm: Yeah I mean everything turned out fine. Who knows, that guy was very nice to us on the surface, maybe he was just a character, I don’t know. Hopefully he doesn’t read this and come seek us out or something…

LOCAL NATIVES WITH VOXHAUL BROADCAST AND CHIEF ON TUE., DEC. 22, AT THE ECHO, 1822 W. SUNSET BLVD, LOS ANGELES. 8:30PM / $5 ADVANCE / $10 AT DOOR / AND A CAN OF FOOD / ALL AGES. ATTHEECHO.COM LOCAL NATIVES’ GORILLA MANOR IS DUE OUT IN THE U.S. ON FRENCHKISS RECORDS FEBRUARY 16, 2010.